lieberries: Well, your proposition is unusual enough that one person might be considered a lot.
GearTattoo: So what intrigues you about my proposition?
I worry the hangnail on my thumb, my hands shaking, thinking about how to answer that. If this were a fancy online dating-site date, I might cheat toward wit in answering his question. But this is not a fancy “98% match” date. This is a man who wants to make out with a stranger once a week during his lunch hour and asked for it, directly, on MetroLink. Surely I can be just as direct.
lieberries: In your picture, you’re very beautiful.
GearTattoo: Do you like kissing?
I think about my married friend’s husband. About the kind of man who would ask for this and nothing else. About safe kisses on front stoops at reasonable hours.
lieberries: Yes, I do. Are you married? Involved?
GearTattoo: No, there isn’t anyone. If someone entered the picture while we were meeting, if you want to start meeting, I would miss a Wednesday.
lieberries: And we would “part as strangers.”
GearTattoo: Yes.
lieberries: So you care about fidelity in this? Do you want to know if I’m married/partnered/involved?
GearTattoo: I care about it for myself. I don’t feel like I can ask the same of you. If you were single, I admit I would feel better, but you’re not obligated to share anything with me.
It seems to me that he is being very miserly with himself. I can touch him wherever I want, but he stays in chaperoned territory. He keeps himself for me, while I could be married with three kids.
I also feel weird that we diverted into an establishment of ethics over something stated pretty plainly in his ad. I wonder again, what is it that he needs?
Recently, I was helping a high school student in our tutoring program with an essay on chivalry, and we got into a pretty interesting discussion about how chivalric code, a kind of objectification of the purity of loving a woman, has sort of devolved into “chivalry,” which we agreed was the sexist objectification of regular manners. I really don’t want GearTattoo writing odes to my dropped hankies.
lieberries: Is this something more to you?
GearTattoo: What do you mean?
lieberries: Than just kissing. Like a self-denial or temptation fetish or something?
He doesn’t immediately chime back. I am starting to get nervous when he finally responds.
GearTattoo: I don’t think so. I’m drawing a boundary around it, but it’s not the boundary that interests me, just the kissing, losing an hour to it. It doesn’t bother me if you can do that with me and be with other people, too, I’m just not made that way. Making out loses its escape if I’m thinking of someone else.
Fair enough.
lieberries: Where do you do this?
GearTattoo: Do you know where the teahouse shelters are?
Celebration Park was built to honor the 150th anniversary of our midwestern city, and the planning committee divided it into sections based on the countries of the world in a sort of essentialist, theme-park way. The teahouse shelters are in the “Asian” section of the park and consist of small picnic tables with a carved pergola over each one. They’re visible throughout the park, but afford the idea of privacy when sitting inside one of the pergolas. He’s thinking of safety, my comfort, again.
lieberries: Of course.
GearTattoo: I’ll meet you at the shelter closest to the bank of water fountains this Wednesday at noon. My first name is Brian.
lieberries: You don’t want me to wear a blue scar
f or carry an umbrella or something?
GearTattoo: I’ll assume the strange woman addressing me by name is you. Certainly, wear and carry what you would like, though.
I snort at that. I do realize that he hasn’t asked for a picture or description, or anything like that.